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Giuseppe Armani's Circle of Joy shows a mother lifting her infant as a girl reaches up. It was made in Florence in 1997, and its diagonal sweep recalls Baroque sculpture. Read its story.
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Circle of Joy sets a mother and her children in hand-painted Italian porcelain, all of them caught at the height of happiness. Armani is said to have drawn on Renaissance and Baroque sculpture, and here he blends that grace with family warmth. Her period dress lets the whole scene seem to step out of another age into the present.
At heart it is a sculpture of joy in motion. Armani's sculpted fabric makes the clothing look wind-swept, as if a breeze had paused mid-gust and left it frozen in porcelain.
Natural colours glow across the figures, warm as a summer afternoon. Applied flowers bloom on the naturalistic base, so the mother and her children seem to stand in a garden of their own.
Giuseppe Armani was born in 1935 in Calci, a Tuscan village near Pisa. A torso he sculpted won him a place at an art gallery in Pisa, across the street from the Leaning Tower.
There he studied the Renaissance masters and carved marble and alabaster, wood and clay. In 1975 Florence Sculture d'Arte, a studio in Tuscany, invited the beloved sculptor to work for it alone, with free rein for his muse.
He sculpted for the Florence studio for the rest of his life, each figure painted by hand in Tuscany. His figures now live in homes around the world, prized by collectors with an eye for a master's touch. They know each piece carries the spirit of the Renaissance he first studied in Pisa.
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